Water world floated as sustainable refuge

Jeanne Roberts EarthTechling, 22nd October 2016

From eVolo’s 2012 competition comes a floating city designed to serve as a refuge for those who survive some unimaginable apocalypse of nature, a final war, or whatever coup the end days might bring.

Called Noah’s Ark, and two points off for lack of originality, this futuristic floating city concept not only addresses the diaspora of species, including man, in the event of a cataclysm, but overcrowding on land, which represents a paltry one-quarter of Earth’ surface.

Extending living space into the ocean not only relieves the inevitable pressure on resources that occurs when too many humans crowd into too small an area, but promises a golden age of renewable energy use, since both wind power and solar power are abundant and easily captured at sea, and once established can be used to expand the proposed floating cities.

In fact, given the power sources that can be extracted from the kinetic energy of moving water, it only makes sense to site these futuristic cities on water, say within the territorial waters limit of about 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers; 14 miles) from the edge of land of a nation.

Based on a concept developed by Aleksandar Joksimovic and Jelena Nikolic of Serbia, these sustainable refuge-type cities are expected to be networked with other Arks, which connect with one another via underwater tunnels, extending the amount of habitable land as more and more species find refuge.

And, though Noah’s Ark won only honorable mention, its concept of an external wall—up to 64 meters (about 210 feet) to damper ocean-going storms like tsunamis or hurricanes is one facet of floating-city lore that seems to make a lot of sense, as is the practice of coating the giant turbines delivering the energy with artificial coral to promote the development of ocean ecosystems.